


193. closest to heaven

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [99]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8229989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah and Helena hanging out on a rooftop.





	

****The lock to the school’s roof has already been picked by the time Sarah makes it up the stairs. All she can do is blink at it – the lock, the open door, the crack of sky she can see through the gap. She thought no one else at her high school knew about the roof but her. She’d thought it was her _place_ , the one place in this entire hellhole she could go to be alone.

But it’s not. There’s someone else here. Apparently.

Sarah sighs, sharp and angry, through her nose. She stands there. Her hands make fists. _Fuck it_ , she thinks to herself, and pushes the door open, and walks onto the roof.

She can see heat waves rising from the shitty tar material the roof is made out of; it looks the same as it always does, air conditioning units and mysterious pieces of litter whose sources are unknown.

And: a tuft of blonde hair poking up from behind one of the a/c units. Sarah skids abruptly to a halt. That’s _Helena_ ; she’d recognize that shitty perm anywhere. Helena, the girl who sits in the back of the classroom. Helena, who nobody talks to. Helena, who one time their freshmen year snapped and beat a girl half to death before going peaceably back to her Jell-O. Helena, who stares at Sarah sometimes when they pass in the hall; Helena whose eyes are wide and open, soft ghost-pleas.

She’s ready to back up and go back inside, but it’s clear Helena has noticed her. Sarah forgets how you’re supposed to react to wild animals – don’t show fear? Back down? Run? Don’t? She thinks _fuck it_ again, and steps forward. It’s a big roof. She’s gonna sit in the corner she always sits in, and think about how deeply she’s fucked up her life, and everything will be fine.

She sits in her corner and leans back, sighs, watches a lone puff of cloud make its way across the sky.

Then there’s a rustling sound, and Helena has sat down next to her. She smells like old milk and loneliness, and – Sarah didn’t know loneliness had a smell, but she knows for certain that it’s pouring off Helena’s skin in waves.

“Hello,” Helena says.

“Hey,” Sarah says, a rapid little bitten-off syllable. A clear _don’t talk to me_ that Helena completely misses, somehow.

“I didn’t know when you would come,” Helena says. “If you would come.”

“Sorry?” Sarah says, brow wrinkled in confusion. Helena looks down and fiddles with her sleeves.

“I saw you,” she says quickly, words tripping over themselves to get out of her mouth. “I saw you take the stairs up here. So I waited until you came back down, and then I went up, and I found this place, and I watched you so I knew when you would—”

She makes a frustrated self, hits herself once in the head with the heel of her hand. It is a horribly casual gesture, like this is a normal thing to do when you make a mistake.

“Stupid,” she whispers to herself, and: “sorry. I didn’t – I didn’t mean to _follow_ you, only I.” There should be a second part to that sentence, but it’s very final coming out of Helena’s mouth.

“It’s fine,” Sarah says, even though it isn’t. She’s watching Helena’s hands. The blood on them, two years ago, the glazed emptiness in Helena’s eyes as her fist fell over and over and over—

There’s a chocolate bar shoved under her nose. It’s half-melted. Sarah looks at it, and then at Helena, and then at the chocolate bar again.

“Take it,” Helena says insistently, and Sarah does. Next to her Helena is rocking back and forth, slightly, and Sarah’s hands are trembling just a little bit as she unwraps the chocolate bar and takes a bite. They’d hauled that girl out in a stretcher. Sarah should never have come up here.

“Thanks,” she says, through a stickydry mouth. She hands the chocolate bar back to Helena. “You want some?”

Helena takes it and shoves half the bar into her mouth at once, like she’s starving. She chews with her mouth open; it’s a massacre. Her eyes watch Sarah. Her gaze is shrewd.

“You’re kind,” she says through a mouthful of chocolate.

Sarah laughs, can’t help it. “Cheers,” she says, “but I think pretty much everyone’d disagree.”

“No,” Helena says, shaking her head and continuing to massacre the chocolate bar. “Sometimes when you look at me you smile. You’re the only one. Ever.”

Well, shit. Sarah doesn’t say anything to that, because what _do_ you say? How do you react? Her hands twist nervously around each other, her fingers picking at themselves. Next to her Helena, unconcerned, has ripped the wrapper open so that she can lick the melted chocolate off the plastic. It is obscene. Sarah looks away, up towards the sky.

“I dreamed that,” Helena says hopefully, “we were friends.”

“Did you,” Sarah says. Her voice is weak.

“Yes,” Helena says. “And now it’s true.”

Sarah opens her mouth and closes her mouth and doesn’t say anything stupid, like _stalking me and then offering me a chocolate bar that you eat yourself doesn’t make us friends, only an idiot would think that made us friends, can’t you see I’m terrified of you_. Instead she says “Great,” and her voice is just as weak. She should put a stop to this now, because she can see her future and it smells like old milk. But how do you tell this girl _no_. How do you stop a trainwreck when it is already in motion.

“Great,” Helena parrots, and smiles big and bright. Her teeth are chocolate-stained. Sarah doesn’t tell her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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